Carly Fiorina, in grand political tradition, now says Sarah Palin is qualified for the Presidency after declaring her unqualified for national office when she was John McCain's campaign advisor.
Evidently a couple of years and Palin quitting in the middle of her term is all it takes for Fiorina to pronounce her "qualified".
On CNN's The Situation Room Monday:
BLITZER: You're neck and neck in this most recent Reuters/IPSOS poll. Barbara Boxer, 49 percent; Carly Fiorina, 45 percent, but 4.5 percent sampling error.
Sarah Palin is coming to California to do this big event there, but you and Meg Whitman, who is running for governor, you're going to stay away from that event. How come?
FIORINA: Well, because I'm doing a whole series of other events including an event with veterans with John McCain. As you, of course, can appreciate, your campaign schedule gets set quite far out in advance in terms of commitments. Sarah Palin is here to endorse her book, I believe, and to raise money, and I am here running for office. So we're all busy. And it's important that I continue to meet with as many voters as possible, because this is a very important election. And I believe the voters of California agree with me that the direction of our state and our nation is at stake here.
BLITZER: I remember during the campaign the McCain campaign, you said at the time -- you got into trouble for saying it -- you didn't think Sarah Palin was qualified to run a major corporation like Hewlett-Packard, but she's endorsed you now. Do you think she's qualified to be president of the United States?
FIORINA: I certainly think she's qualified to be president of the United States. You may remember, Wolf, I also said that Barack Obama, John McCain and Joe Biden weren't qualified to run a major corporation.
Look, you need technical skills to run a company. I couldn't fly a jet airplane tomorrow either. But ours was intended to be a citizen government. That is what "of, by, and for the people" means. And somehow we've grown accustomed to career politicians like Barbara Boxer, who has done nothing else in her professional life, virtually, other than be a politician. It isn't what our Founding Fathers intended.
And I think a lot of people in California want someone who hasn't been in Washington forever, who isn't a bitter partisan who has accomplished nothing virtually. That's why her own hometown paper wouldn't endorse her. They called her ineffective and bitterly partisan.
A citizen government as defined by Carly Fiorina is nothing short of a corporate government. Seeing her use the terms "government" and "corporation" interchangeably gives me the willies. Maybe it's the way she wrecked so many people's lives while she was running Lucent and then HP, but I just don't see her as qualified to opine on others' qualifications.
